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Category: ISS

Last week Astronaut Terry Virts tweeted a picture of himself in the International Space Station’s cupola wearing a J.J. Watt shirt: This morning I had a chance to speak with Virts, another NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore and European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. Of course I got right to the important question. Is J.J. really the best …

Don’t you just want to hate Russia right about now? A lot of Americans do, particularly after the country appropriated the Crimean Peninsula and has fomented a civil war in Eastern Ukraine. And a lot of people are understandably mad that NASA has to send its astronauts half way around the world, to the former …

The United States and Russia are engaged in a deepening political crisis over the future of Ukraine and its Crimean Peninsula. A big question is what happens to the International Space Station partnership, in which the United States operates the station and Russia provides transport to and from the orbiting laboratory. NASA currently pays ROSCOSMOS approximately […] …

On Thursday I invited readers on this blog and on Facebook to submit questions for the two U.S. astronauts currently living on the International Space Station, Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins. Here, then, are there responses to the questions I was able to ask. Q. What most needs improvement on the ISS? Is it the […] …

Later this morning I have the opportunity to speak with U.S. astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio, who are currently aboard the International Space Station. I plan to ask them about their experiences with their unplanned spacewalks right before Christmas to repair a crippled cooling system. But I also wanted to throw the floor open […] …

One of the most very special things about Houston is that it’s the place where astronauts live. Some of them even fall in love, get married and have kids here. Like Karen Nyberg, presently aboard the International Space Station, and Doug Hurley, the pilot for the final space shuttle mission did. Karen is coming up …

Let’s say you woke up this morning to find that the moon had moved as close to Earth as the International Space Station. What would happen? Some crazy and calamitous stuff! The moon, at present, is about 240,000 miles from the Earth. If we were to move it to the space station’s orbit, which is about …

I know I’m at risk of turning this science blog into a blog consisting solely of pictures from space, but I can’t help myself this morning. The following photo, from Karen Nyberg aboard the International Space Station, is just that cool. The photo shows an impressive line of thunderstorms moving through Asia. And I don’t …

While everyone has, deservedly so, been going gaga over the picture of Earth from Saturn, astronaut Karen Nyberg tweeted a great picture from space a couple of days ago as well. While most photos taken from the International Space Station focus on Earth, Nyberg got a great image of one of the most iconic constellations, The …

Buzz Aldrin – amateur boxer, amateur dancer, inspiration for the Buzz Lightyear character and most importantly the world’s most famous astronaut — is nothing if not opinionated. I recently had the chance to speak with Aldrin, 83, as part of a promotion for his new book, Mission to Mars. During the wide-ranging, 45-minute interview, Aldrin and I spoke …